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147
because of one’s identity and activities. Whereas Chamillionaire wants to be treated
fairly by the police, Weird Al just wants to “roll with the gangstas.” In both cases,
the power differentials (mediated by race) are insurmountable.
At the same time that it offers a critique of marginalization, White and Nerdy
reinforces a variety of assumptions about participation with media and technology.
The song begins with a verse establishing the kind of cultural capital possessed by
Weird Al’s geeky MC; he is a graduate of an Ivy League school, he is good with
math and computers, and he has an appreciation for certain “legitimate tastes” (Earl
Grey Tea and MC Escher, for example). In a later verse, media and technology
become the focus:
Shopping online for deals on some writable media
I edit Wikipedia
I memorized Holy Grail really well
I can recite it right now and have you ROTFLOL
I got a business doing websites
When my friends need some code who do they call?
I do HTML for them all
Even made a homepage for my dog!
These niche media and high-end technology practices mark the speaker as a specific
kind of user of media and technology. The practices the song highlights, such as
math skill, media fandom, computer programming, and high-end internet use have
been reinforced as practices “belonging” to geeky, white, young men through various
discourses about media and technology use. The incongruity created by juxtaposing
these representations of “white and nerdy” identity with the melody, beat, and style
of a rap song (which is marked as “belonging” to a group of which the speaker is not
a member) is what makes the song a successful satire. It is also representative of
Object Description
| Title | Kids as cultural producers: consumption, literacy, and participation |
| Author | Stephenson, Rebecca Herr |
| Author email | rherr@usc.edu; bhs@hri.uci.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Communication |
| School | Annenberg School for Communication |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-25 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2008-10-17 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Banet-Weiser, Sarah |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Gross, Larry Seiter, Ellen |
| Abstract | This dissertation looks closely at the practice of digital media production within a group of special education students and their teachers. Using ethnographic methods of extended participant observation and semi-structured interviews with students, teachers, and parents, along with textual analysis of students' media projects, this work examines the types of learning that emerge from making media at school and the ways in which that learning relates to media and technology use in everyday life. Over the course of one school year (2005-2006), the students who are the focus of this dissertation undertook eight different multimedia production projects, ranging from designing PowerPoint presentations to digital video production and stop-motion animation. Through media production, the students found opportunities to practice traditional and digital literacy skills as well as to explore issues of identity and self-expression.; This dissertation provides empirical support for recommendations made by several media literacy scholars to include media production as part of critical media literacy curricula and contributes a unique case study -- one situated in special education -- to a growing body of work on digital literacy. Three interdisciplinary themes--consumption, literacy, and participation -- are used to organize the description and analysis of the students' media production activities. These themes connect the specific production that took place in the classroom to larger discourses about youth, media, technology, education, and access, working to complicate existing constructions of young people as either helpless victims of manipulative media or naturally savvy media and technology users. Instead, this research emphasizes that the relationships kids have with media and technology are complex, dynamic, intrinsically linked to their identities as consumers and participants in society. Media literacy is thus theorized as a tool for understanding and controlling consumption, participation, and the construction of young people as both current and future citizens. |
| Keyword | media literacy; media production; special education; middle school; digital media |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Los Angeles |
| Coverage date | 2005/2006 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1674 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Stephenson, Rebecca Herr |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Stephenson-2393 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume29/etd-Stephenson-2393.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 152 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 147 because of one’s identity and activities. Whereas Chamillionaire wants to be treated fairly by the police, Weird Al just wants to “roll with the gangstas.” In both cases, the power differentials (mediated by race) are insurmountable. At the same time that it offers a critique of marginalization, White and Nerdy reinforces a variety of assumptions about participation with media and technology. The song begins with a verse establishing the kind of cultural capital possessed by Weird Al’s geeky MC; he is a graduate of an Ivy League school, he is good with math and computers, and he has an appreciation for certain “legitimate tastes” (Earl Grey Tea and MC Escher, for example). In a later verse, media and technology become the focus: Shopping online for deals on some writable media I edit Wikipedia I memorized Holy Grail really well I can recite it right now and have you ROTFLOL I got a business doing websites When my friends need some code who do they call? I do HTML for them all Even made a homepage for my dog! These niche media and high-end technology practices mark the speaker as a specific kind of user of media and technology. The practices the song highlights, such as math skill, media fandom, computer programming, and high-end internet use have been reinforced as practices “belonging” to geeky, white, young men through various discourses about media and technology use. The incongruity created by juxtaposing these representations of “white and nerdy” identity with the melody, beat, and style of a rap song (which is marked as “belonging” to a group of which the speaker is not a member) is what makes the song a successful satire. It is also representative of |
